Alumni Physicians Pushed Harvard to Educate Athletes on CTE Risk. The University Hasn’t Responded.

A group of former Harvard athletes who are now physicians and scientists pitched the University’s sports medicine team last summer on disclosing the risk of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy to contact-sport athletes. Nearly a year later, the group says they have heard nothing back.

At least seven former Harvard football players have been diagnosed with CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head impacts that can only be confirmed via autopsy, according to Christopher J. Nowinski ’00, the co-founder and CEO of the Concussion & CTE Foundation. The most recent diagnosis, Jim Higgins ’70, came earlier this year.

The other publicly identified cases are James M. Peccerillo ’78, Toby Brundage III ’95, Mike T. Brooks ’01, Dick Clasby ’54, Hank Keohane ’60, and Christopher J. Eitzmann ’99, a former Harvard football captain who went on to play for the New England Patriots. The youngest of the seven died in his 30s.

Nowinski, a former Harvard defensive lineman, said he first raised the issue with Harvard Athletics Director Erin McDermott at an Ivy League Football Association dinner in January 2025.

McDermott connected him with the department’s sports medicine team, and in June 2025, Nowinski and a group of former Harvard athletes and physicians presented information on CTE to several Harvard coaches and medical staff at Dillon Field House.

The presentation was led by Daniel H. Daneshvar, the newly appointed chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School and a leading CTE researcher.

Two former Harvard athletes joined by video conference: Jim S. Castle ’97, a Harvard football alumnus and behavioral neurologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and Colleen A.M. Linehan ’97, a former captain of Harvard women’s ice hockey and an orthopedic surgeon.

Harvard football head coach Andrew Aurich attended the meeting on Zoom, according to Nowinski. Aurich did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Nowinski said the goal of the meeting was to give Harvard’s coaches and medical staff the information they would need to build a CTE education program for athletes — not to dictate what that program should look like.

“Our intention was, here’s the facts. Now you guys decide how to disseminate these facts,” Nowinski said. “I did not expect to go that far and then be told we’re not going to tell them anything.”

The Thomas B. Quigley Society for the Advancement of Sports Medicine, a group of former Harvard varsity athletes who became orthopedic surgeons, submitted a letter of support for CTE risk disclosure that was read aloud at the June meeting. Linehan, a member of the society, attended the meeting on the group’s behalf.

Linehan said the coaches and staff seemed “receptive” during the meeting but were uncertain about how to implement a CTE education component, which is not currently part of existing concussion education or training protocols for Harvard’s sports teams.

Nowinski said communication from Harvard Athletics stopped after the presentation. The group followed up with McDermott, then-head team physician Amin Farokhrani, and assistant athletic trainer Niki Rybko, but received no response, he added.

“We could not get emails returned,” he said, “so we suspect they did not go forward with our proposal to provide education on CTE to Harvard athletes.”

Farokhrani and Rybko did not respond to a request for comment.

Harvard Athletics spokesperson Imry Halevi wrote in a statement that Harvard follows existing Ivy League policy, but did not comment on the correspondence with outside experts or whether the Athletics Department would implement a CTE education program.

“The Ivy League maintains a set of policies and protocols regarding head injuries and concussions for student-athletes, and we strictly adhere to them,” he wrote.

Harvard football players are required to complete a concussion training module at the start of each season and undergo baseline concussion testing. Harvard also requires players in high-contact positions to wear Guardian Caps — cushioned pads worn on the outside of helmets — during practice, current and former players said. But neither measure explicitly addresses CTE.

In 2011, the Ivy League became the first NCAA Division I conference to limit the number of full-contact football practices, a change Nowinski helped push for during former Harvard football head coach Tim Murphy’s tenure. The new rule came one year after Dartmouth eliminated full-contact practices from its football program entirely.

“I wish I could say that Harvard was the first school. We’re a leader in so many aspects of the world,” Linehan said. “The Quigley Society really wants to see Harvard lead the way in this endeavor also.”

Nowinski said the push should extend beyond football, arguing for disclosure to athletes in any contact sport in which CTE has been documented, including ice hockey, rugby, and soccer.

Castle, who played center on Harvard’s junior varsity team and on the varsity scout team before stepping away from football after his sophomore year to focus on pre-medical studies, said Harvard should take more decisive action and consider discontinuing the sport.

“At Harvard, I wish that the leadership would be a little bit more courageous about taking a role and saying, ‘Look, this is a clear danger,’” he said. “There’s a lot of money that gets thrown around because of football, but at some level, you have to do the right thing.”

Castle, who is board certified in neurology, said he is skeptical that padded helmet covers like Guardian Caps can meaningfully reduce the risk.

“If you crack an egg and put it into a container and shake it, it really doesn’t matter what the container is made out of. What matters is that you’ve shaken that egg,” he said. “And that’s how I look at brain damage.”

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at [email protected].

—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.